Since at least 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, political commentators have become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of class dealignment — that is, the separation of working-class voters from the parties that ostensibly represent them. In these discussions, white working-class voters’ growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party took center stage. But lost in this talk was, the Harvard sociologist and author of How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (2024) Stephanie Ternullo tells Jacobin, the complexity of white working-class politics.

Too often politicians and pundits spoke of this demographic as if it was a single homogenous bloc. However, the politics of the tens of millions of white middle- and working-class Americans are shaped by the histories of the communities in which they live and the organizations, from churches to unions, that have taken root around them. These organizations, Ternullo argues, provide the foundation for a collective sense of partisanship, or belonging to one political party rather than another. This means that reversing the trend of dealignment will be harder work than some have suggested. The Left cannot, she insists, build its support among the working class simply by changing its rhetoric. It must also work to rebuild institutions like labor unions that were the bedrock of progressive forces in the past.